Description

The Princess has been kidnapped by the evil Bowser, and it is up to Mario and brother Luigi to save the day.

The first ever platform adventure for the Mario Brothers has the player exploring level after level, with Bowser to contend with as the end of level boss. Power-ups include the Super Mushroom, which increases Mario's size and power, the fire flower, allowing him to shoot fireballs at enemies, and the ever important starman for a short burst of invincibility.

Each level includes a bonus section filled with coins plus a shortcut through the level, plenty of bad buys and obstacles to get past, and an end of level flag, in which the higher the player grabs it, the more points are awarded to them. Certain levels also include warp points, which takes the player to higher levels.

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Cereal

Super Mario Bros. was popular enough to have a breakfast cereal based on the game called the "Nintendo Cereal System", and was co-packaged with Legend of Zelda cereal. The sweetened corn bits were in the shape of Mario, Koopa Troopa, Goomba, Bowser, and a Super Mushroom.

NES supplement

For a time, Super Mario Brothers was the game packaged with a new NES system, along with the Zapper Light Gun and the game Duck Hunt.

Parody

Joe Dixon released a spoof version of Super Mario Bros. in late 2002. It replaces Mario, Toadstool, and the enemies with characters from South Park.

Sales

According to the Guiness Book Of Records, as of 2003 Super Mario Bros. is the best-selling video game of all time, with a total of 40.23 million units sold worldwide, as of 1999. The whole Mario Bros. series has 26 games and sold over 152 million copies since 1983, according to Guiness.

It is widely believed that the billionth game unit sold by Nintendo was Super Mario Bros..

TV series

Super Mario Bros. was popular enough to have a TV cartoon based on it in the late 1980's-early 1990's. It starred "Captain" Lou Albano as Mario, and Danny Wells as Luigi in the live-action segments, and animated Mario cartoons Monday-Thursday (Friday was for cartoons based on Legend of Zelda).

Awards

EGM

February 2006 - #1 out of 200 Games of their Time

FLUX

Issue #4 - #66 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" list

Game Informer

August 2001 (Issue 100) - #2 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time list"

October 2005 (Issue 138) - one of the "Top 25 Most Influential Games of All Time"

IGN

#1 Game of All Time (or revolutionary graphics and gameplay at the time of its release)